(Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize) In this "witty, provocative urban fable" (NYTBR), following The Accidental (which was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize, as well as the Booker and Orange prizes, and won the Whitbread Award), Ali Smith probes our paradoxical need for both separation and true connection. A dinner-party guest named Miles locks himself in an upstairs bedroom and refuses to come out, communicating only by cryptic notes slipped under the door. As people he may have some slight connection to are summoned, one by one, to try to coax him out, he becomes a news item and then a media darling, drawing crowds hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious stranger at the window.

"Quirky, intricately put together ... a book about loss and retention: about what we forget and what we remember, about the people who pass through our lives and what bits of them cling to our consciousness."—NYTimes

"By turns whimsical and subtly wrenching.... With her penchant for wordplay on full display, the author of The Accidental switches between the perspectives of four people whose lives have been peripherally touched by her gentle shut-in, a man who, like J.D. Salinger's Seymour Glass, has perhaps too much heart to survive comfortably in a hard world."—NPR, Five 2011 Books that Stick With You

"A marvel of a novel, sweeping in purpose (what is the meaning of life, of history, of our presence or our absence) and magnetic in both the presentation of its cast and characters and the unfolding of its deceptively simple plot.... The writing in There but for the is lovely, the imagery sharp and moving, and the flow unstoppable."—Huffington Post